When the Bloomberg administration was accused this month of housing formerly homeless families in buildings with serious housing code violations, city officials came back with an argument they had made before: The number of code violations on a building, they said, is not proof that any one apartment is unsafe.
But one week later, the administration was counting violations. Challenging the planned sale of the Starrett City complex in Brooklyn, city officials said there were 8,792 outstanding housing maintenance code violations in other buildings already owned by the prospective buyer, who has offered $1.3 billion for Starrett City.
Code enforcement is basically a violation-writing machine, said Jerilyn Perine, a former housing commissioner who is now executive director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, a policy group. What gets done with those violations and what they really mean is a whole different thing.
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